My name is Spencer Greenhalgh.

I am an assistant professor of information communication technology in the School of Information Science at the University of Kentucky. I am an interdisciplinary, “digital methods” researcher studying meaning-making practices on online platforms. My training is as an educational technology researcher, but I also study social media and other online platforms as they relate to other contexts, including Mormon Studies.

Building on the social media research methodologies I learned as an education researcher, I have studied Mormon identity and practice in the #ldsconf hashtag, how disinformation operations sponsored by Venezuela, Russia, and other countries and targeting the 2016 U.S. Presidential election invoked Mormonism in order to divide Americans, and how Latter-day Saint officials’ acquisition and use of domain names highlights tensions between religious legitimacy as valued in Latter-day Saint contexts and legitimacy as defined in sociotechnical systems. I am currently working on research related to online spaces informed by both Mormonism and the American far right.